


Nile Breathes

by HSavinien



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Blood, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Injury, Nile Freeman-centric, POV Nile Freeman, Post-Canon, Team Feels, Undercover Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:54:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25866994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HSavinien/pseuds/HSavinien
Summary: It's the end of Nile's undercover mission and the roof was apparently not quite sound. Her team's there, though.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 172





	Nile Breathes

Nile breathes through the crackle of her ribs mending, the dust settling around her like motes of gold in the falling light. 

The beam above her creaks, but it will probably hold long enough. Copley had passed on concerns about this orphanage, but hadn’t had any data on its structural stability, just the practice of selling off orphans (who weren’t really orphans) to rich Americans looking to adopt and milking Australian volunteers for donations. She’d heard the creak in time to scream for everyone to run and then, well, her body had slowed the roof beam long enough for the last underfed kid to squirm out past her to the waiting aid workers. It’s propped on the edge of a windowsill, so it didn’t squash her flat, but there are a few things broken.

It hurts. When blood stops trickling through her teeth, she’ll start swearing.

The beam will hold long enough. Joe and Andy aren’t too far away. Nicky’s in a sniper’s nest, just in case the local militia objected to their interference, but Joe and Andy weren’t far, translating for the human rights lawyers. Everybody in a three klick radius must have heard the crash when the roof came down. They’ll come for her soon.

Her ribs mend enough for her to spit blood and then a, “ _ Fuck _!” for good measure, and she realizes that that’s the first sound that’s actually penetrated the ringing in her ears. Shaking her head a little to clear it, she winces as the rest of the world starts roaring back. Andy is shouting somewhere nearby. People are scrabbling at the rubble outside. 

Nile bites her lip and squirms, slowly shifting herself toward the windowsill where it will be a little more plausible for her to have survived with only a concussion. She waits at a warning creak, groaning through clenched teeth, but the beam doesn’t shift. Nile breathes easier.

Then Joe’s there, bracing the beam, while Andy’s hands are strong around her wrists, helping her slide free and blocking her from view. Joe runs quick, gentle hands down her sides before letting her get up. 

“‘M all right,” she says, and she’s not, but she’s getting there. 

“Even so, lean on me until we’re out of here,” Andy says, wrapping a shawl around them both and hiking Nile’s arm over her shoulders. Andy’s warm against her and it feels good, even as she can feel her bruises fading.

“Kids made it out, right?” She’d been the only one of them who could pass for a college kid doing a “voluntour” trip around southwest Asia, and she’d only been inside for a couple days while the rest of them got the human rights people in place, but it had been long enough to see that the kids weren’t doing well. They were quiet in ways that healthy, happy kids weren’t.

Joe nods. “They’re all fine. The lawyers started shouting about child endangerment when the building came down, but you got the last of them out.”

Andy hikes Nile’s arm a little higher over her shoulder and the three of them stumble as fast as they can toward the exit, which is filling up with would-be rescuers. 

“Alhamdulillah, she’s fine!” Joe calls joyfully. “Only a little concussion.”

The hubbub cheers up considerably and a few people echo Joe's exclamation. Andy manages to extract Nile from the building and Nicky trots up with an extremely visible medic’s bag, and just like that, she’s clear. Everyone else’s attention refocuses on the kids and aid workers. Andy, Joe, and Nicky shift themselves and Nile back to their safehouse in about ten minutes, and she feels healed up by the time they make it. 

“Good job team,” Nicky says, flopping down next to Joe.   
  
“Shower?” Andy asks.

“Food?” Nile says.

“Shower first,” Joe says. “You’re only lucky that Andy got that shawl around you or they’d have been calling for a medevac.”

She sighs, but he has a point; she's sticky with blood and it's leaked through her clothes. Nicky pats her elbow, as high up as he can reach from where he’s attempting to become one with both the couch and Joe’s side, and passes over her mp3 player. “I put the speaker in the bathroom before we left.”

That sounds better than food. Nile grabs it and her shoulders unclench a little already. She strips into the plastic-lined hamper in the bathroom, plunks the mp3 player into the speaker cradle and flicks over to one of her older playlists. She turns the volume up loud enough to hear over the water since the others won’t care, puts on her cap, and steps under the warm spray. 

Luckily there’s no damage to her head this time; she hates having to wash bits of herself out of her hair. She scrubs her face and the back of her neck and soaps her ribs, watching a thick swirl of red and what might be tiny bone shards run down the drain. Blithe sings about love and doing better and Nile breathes in the lyrics and breathes out the tension. The water pressure isn't as good as she likes, but it will do. The kids will go back to their families, with some financial support to help them out for a while and get them some schooling. They won’t end up somewhere nobody speaks their language or knows their culture. 

She was hurt, but she’s mended. Her team is waiting for her. There will probably be food by the time she’s out and dressed, and they’ll crowd around the table and share updates from the most recent ongoing arguments that she missed this week (the inherent morality or immorality of sharks and other sea creatures). Nile will be able to check her real phone for news about Booker’s current volunteer work and pull some music that one of the older kids had told her to look up. She and Nicky will work on her Italian/medieval Genovese, so she can understand more when the team accidentally slips into it. Joe will help her go over her research for her thesis project (people of color and the use of light in Renaissance art). She’ll practice knife throwing with Andy and do pushups until one of them falls over (probably her) and play music for her that’s approximately as old as the last fingernail that Andy grew back.

Nile breathes. The water falls around her like mist and her shoulders drop until her neck loosens.

Nile breathes out.

And gets out of the shower to dress and go eat with her team.


End file.
